Shawn’s Staturday: Monday Night Football edition

The Chiefs’ matchup tonight against the New York Giants will only mark the 13th time that Kansas City will be playing under the lights on a Monday, but based on the Chiefs’ previous 12 games this is how tonight might go…

Kansas City has been on a steep decline so far this season compared to the past few years but the schedule for the Chiefs lightens up a small amount with an extra day of rest and a depleted New York Giants coming into GEHA field at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Chiefs have been blessed enough to be the star of primetime games as of late, scoring five games per season since Patrick Mahomes started under center for KC, but this year the Chiefs’ lone Monday Night Football game comes against a Giants team that does not look as threatening as they may have before the season.

Currently, the Giants RB1 Saquon Barkley and WR1 Kenny Golladay are both listed as OUT against the Chiefs and the rest of their injury report makes QB Daniel Jones and head coach Joe Judge look ominously towards the game tonight.

But the Chiefs have their own problems–specifically their defense (ranked 31st in the NFL)–which bode well for Judge and his 2-5 Giants coming off a huge 25-3 blowout win against Carolina last week when Jones out-quarterbacked Sam Darnold to the point where Darnold was benched for backup Phillip Walker.

If you look at Kansas City’s history on Monday Night Football, and at their history against the NY Giants, then Jones and Judge have even more optimism entering Arrowhead.

The Chiefs are currently 8-4 on MNF since 2010, with their last game being a 34-20 victory over Baltimore in late September last season, but Monday Night games have not always been so kind to Kansas City.

Granted, some of the best and biggest Chiefs games in recent memory have been on Monday night. For instance, the 142.2-decibel record-breaking MNF game against New England in 2014, but there are also painful memories like the 54-51 loss to the Rams where Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff combined for 890 passing yards and 11 total touchdowns.

Not to mention the Chiefs are 3-11 against the Giants since their first matchup nearly 47 years ago.

The last meeting between the two teams was one of the lowest-scoring games in Reid’s career as Kansas City’s head coach with a final score being 9-12 and the Chiefs losing in overtime at MetLife Stadium in 2017.

That game starred Alex Smith and Eli Manning though, not Patrick Mahomes or the 6th overall pick of the 2019 NFL Draft.

The Giants will surely be missing their star running back in the backfield but with Jones as their QB, they will still have a somewhat-intimidating run game considering Jones entered week eight with the third-most rushing yards by a QB (behind Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts).

And since the Chiefs are still anemic when it comes to stopping the run–allowing the fifth-most yards per carry in the NFL–it could be a huge game for Jones and his legs, especially if Sterling Shepard and rookie WR Kadarius Toney are upgraded from ‘questionable’ to ‘OUT’.

No matter who is on the field and who is not for the Giants it will likely be a game that is Kansas City’s to lose, which they very easily could do based on the past few weeks and the deteriorating attitude of the Chiefs’ defensive leaders since their pitiful loss to Buffalo last week.


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